Redesigning the Digital Home of Western Canada’s Largest Multi-Sector Resource Conference

Over 23 years, the BC Natural Resources Forum has grown into Western Canada’s largest multi-sector resource conference, bringing First Nations, government, and the natural resource sector together each year to share opportunities, innovative solutions, and success stories. Few events in the province carry that kind of institutional weight, and the website needed to reflect it.

The Problem

C3 Alliance came to us with a conference that had outgrown its digital presence. The BC Natural Resources Forum had built a strong reputation over more than two decades, but the website was no longer keeping pace with the scale and significance of the event. After completing a rebrand, they needed a site that could carry the new identity forward and give the forum the credibility online that it had long earned in person.

The stakes were clear: the forum draws First Nations leaders, government officials, and senior resource sector executives. Attracting higher-level participants requires a first impression that signals quality, organization, and relevance. The old site was functional in a basic sense, but it was not doing the forum justice, and it was not equipped to handle the volume and variety of content the event generates each year.

The Strategic Shift

Ballistic Arts offered Website Design & Development

We designed and built a site that could do two things at once: lead with the forum’s refreshed brand in a way that feels genuinely modern, and manage the substantial information load that a multi-day, multi-sector conference demands. Speaker profiles, program schedules, registration flows, session details, and news updates all needed a clear home, organized so visitors could find what they needed quickly and register without friction.

The design process started with C3’s new branding as the foundation. Every layout decision, colour choice, and typographic treatment was made in service of that identity, applied consistently across the site so the forum’s visual refresh landed with full impact rather than feeling like a coat of paint over the old structure.

Design Moves That Made the Difference

From Rebrand to Working Platform

We kicked off with C3 Alliance to understand the forum’s pain points, communication goals, and refreshed brand direction. From there, we designed a full-site, high-fidelity prototype that the client could review and interact with before development began. That gave the team a clear sense of how the site would feel, how the information hierarchy would work, and how key journeys like registration and program browsing would flow.

Once the structure was validated, we built the site in WordPress as a friendly, stable, and high-performing CMS. For a conference team managing constant updates before, during, and after the event, that backend mattered as much as the frontend.

The Results

The new site arrived exactly when the forum needed it: alongside a rebrand, ahead of an event cycle, and with a mandate to attract a higher calibre of participants. It delivered on all three fronts. The refreshed branding came through clearly and consistently, the site handled the full complexity of the conference’s content without feeling cluttered, and the C3 team had a platform they could operate and update on their own from launch day forward.

Visitors now arrive at a site that reflects the scale and seriousness of the forum. Registration is straightforward, the program is easy to follow, and speaker information is presented in a way that conveys the quality of the lineup. For an event built on bringing the right people into the same room, the site now does its part in getting them there.

Why It Works

Every single decision made in this project was a direct response to the needs of the C3 Team:

A rebranded conference needed its new identity applied consistently and confidently across its primary public-facing channel.

• What we did: We used C3’s communication goals and brand direction to drive every visual and structural decision throughout the build.

The site needed to carry a large volume of event content without becoming difficult to navigate.

• What we did: We prototyped the full site before development so the information hierarchy could be tested, refined, and approved before build-out.

Users needed to register and follow the program clearly across devices.

• What we did: Registration and program browsing were treated as primary journeys, with clear calls to action, logical page flow, and accessible design throughout.

The C3 team needed to manage updates independently through a high-activity event cycle.

• What we did: We built on WordPress and configured the CMS around how the team operates, then trained them to take ownership from launch day forward.

Need a Website That Can Carry a High-Profile Event?

Ballistic Arts designs and develops websites that help complex organizations communicate clearly, launch stronger brands, and give internal teams the tools they need to keep moving.